


undeath (and no, not like zombies)

by junietuesday25



Series: QLFC Entries [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Gen, Grief/Mourning, IDK HOW TO TAG DARKFIC IM SORRY, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Insanity, Necromancy, Spirits, not in any healthy way but, uhh.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22471180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junietuesday25/pseuds/junietuesday25
Summary: Fred watches over George after the Battle.It can drive a person mad, apparently.But since when have either of the Weasley twins followed the rules?
Relationships: Fred Weasley & George Weasley
Series: QLFC Entries [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616734
Kudos: 7





	undeath (and no, not like zombies)

**Author's Note:**

> **original a/n:**  
>  For the Quidditch League.  
> Disclaimers and Warnings:  
> \- I don’t own Harry Potter.  
> Team: Puddlemere United  
> Position: Keeper  
> Position Prompt: _Madness._ Write about a character descending into madness of any kind.  
> Word Count (Minus A/N): 1858  
> Beta’d By: [falling winter roses](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/7687731), [ginnys01](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/4938720/), [emryses](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5406340/), [Marvelgeek42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvelgeek42)
> 
>  **a/n 1/29/20**  
>  this was a good one in my opinion, it probably would've been better if i had worked on it longer and expanded it (i should get around to that) but i still really like how this turned out!

Fred watches over George after the Battle.

Okay, so technically he’s not supposed to do it. Wizards can sort of sense spirits, even if they’re not exactly aware that it’s a _spirit_ that they’re feeling. It can drive a person mad, apparently.

But since when have either of the Weasley twins followed the rules? 

Answer: when they want to. And Fred sure as hell doesn’t want to follow this rule.

And besides, he’s careful; he avoids brushing against anything, and keeps his distance from George, no matter how much he wants to sit next to him or put an arm around his shoulder or _anything_ the surprisingly few times that George breaks down and cries in the emptiness of their flat. It’s painful, but at least he’s _there._ If he can’t actually interact with George, so be it—I mean, he is dead. It’s not like he can actually _be there_ for his twin in any way other than spirit (ha, spirit).

For a while, the system works great. Well, as great as watching your twin grieve you and being unable to help whatsoever works, anyway.

Because being dead really, really sucks. It’s not just the fact that you’re, well, _dead;_ it’s the fact that you have no choice but to sit and watch while everyone you love grieves and hurts and eventually has to move on without you. And you’re just _stuck._

And it’s especially bad when you have a twin. Fred and George used to do everything together, and that was only a very, very slight exaggeration. Now he has to watch while George finds a way to pick up the pieces—it’s agonizing because he’s right there, he’s _right there,_ and yet he can do nothing but float by his twin’s side (yes, float, apparently that’s a thing he can do now). They were each other’s go-to for comfort, the few times it was needed; every instinct is telling him to go to his twin and hug him and reassure him that things are gonna be fine.

But he deals. He has to, for George’s sake especially.

Until one day Fred screws up, and things start to fall apart.

He’s trying to walk past George in the thin hallway their rooms connect to, which he’s done multiple times—what, he can’t follow George around _all the time,_ sometimes he wants to go to his room for a bit. But what he _doesn’t_ expect is for his shoulder to brush against George’s, and George’s head to jerk up, looking around.

_Shit._

Thankfully, George just shakes his head and goes into his room. Fred manages to breathe—metaphorically, of course.

But it keeps happening. Even when Fred does nothing, touches nothing, George will look up and search around, and say aloud, “Is it—” he’ll stutter over the name, then settle on “—you?”

Fred says nothing, of course. His purpose is to make sure George _moves on,_ not get stuck on grieving for him. But still, that one brush seemed to do it for George; he isn’t discouraged whatsoever by the lack of response and tries, again and again, to contact him by any means necessary. He spends more hours in the lab; he even travels to the local bookstore to search for books about death, returning to their flat only in the early hours of the morning. Even the rest of the family and Lee and Angelina and Alicia and Katie are noticing how exhausted George looks, even more so than what they’ve gotten used to after Fred’s death—they ask him how he’s holding up, but George says nothing but a short “Fine.”

At this point, Fred makes a decision.

So when George finally falls asleep, Fred pushes himself into the dream. He told himself he wouldn’t intervene, that his contact was what had started this whole mess in the first place, but who better to help a Weasley twin than a Weasley twin?

It’s...surprisingly peaceful. None of the crazy explosions or wild shenanigans or hot girls that pervade Fred’s dreams; George is just sitting, quietly, by the pond outside the Burrow. Fred goes to sit beside him, and George looks up.

“Hey,” Fred says, and George seems unable to do anything but blink and stare.

Then he says, “I knew it, I can talk to you!”

“What?”

“Okay, okay,” George says, standing up and pacing, “how did you do this? Maybe I can—”

“I—” Then Fred cuts off. “No, you can’t keep getting hung up on this, you have to let me go.”

“Wh—what?” George stops, looking like he’s been punched. “Let you go?”

“Exactly,” Fred says. “This is hurting you, I’m already dead, you have to—”

George steps away, covering his ear and the hole on the other side of his head. “You’re not Fred,” he mutters, “he’d want me to find a way…”

Fred feels a sucking in his gut, then he’s back in George’s bedroom, staring helplessly at the silent form of his twin, whose face is scrunched up almost in pain.

It only gets worse from there. Especially when Harry makes the mistake of mentioning the Resurrection Stone from the Tale of the Three Brothers, which apparently is real. Fred knows George knows the path that Harry took through the forest, or at least the general idea, so nothing’s stopping him from going and trying to find it.

Fred isn’t sure how the Stone works. Will he be able to resist being summoned? Can someone appear in his place, maybe? Or will it yank him there against his will?

The latter, apparently.

George Apparates to Hogsmeade then walks the rest of the way to Hogwarts, Fred trailing helplessly behind. It’s not like he can stop him; interacting with the living world is what got him into his mess in the first place. Smoothly, George says to Hagrid—who’s guarding the gate—that he wants to walk through Hogwarts and think of his memories of Fred in hopes to maybe feel better, and Hagrid, tearing up, lets him in.

George looks around. When he sees no one watching him, he darts to the Forbidden Forest and walks back and forth across the front of it, searching for the spot where Hagrid brought Harry’s seemingly dead body out, then entering the forest once he finds it. Somehow Fred can sense the magic of the Stone; it tugs somewhere deep in his stomach, its aura buzzes through his veins the closer he gets to it. Despairingly, he watches as George gets closer and closer to it, using his wand to clear the litter from the path. Fred’s face falls while George’s lights up when he finds the Stone sitting innocently on the ground.

George carefully picks it up and brushes the dirt off it. Then he turns it over once, twice, a third time, then—

Fred chokes, and suddenly his body is far more corporeal. Which still isn’t very corporeal, but it’s disorienting after so much time of floating, weightless—he falls to the ground and, when he tries to get up, stumbles from the added mass.

“It worked!” George says, sounding brighter than he had in months. “Okay, come on, let’s—”

“No, don’t you remember the story?” Fred says. Already he feels heavier, and not just in the literal sense he was talking about earlier. “You can’t keep me here like this, we’ll both go mad.”

George’s expression darkens. “Really?” he says. “What if I just keep you here in bursts, would that—”

“George, that’s not the point,” Fred says. He hates being the responsible one, but: “This has to stop.”

“Stop?” George repeats. “No, there’s a way somehow, if not the Stone then—”

“George—”

“Shut up! I know those Muggles have the, uh, the things, those boards? And maybe I can add a magical aspect—”

“You—”

George lets out a frustrated noise, then drops the stone; Fred feels himself turning back into a spirit, floating up once again to watch as George realizes what he’s done and looks down to see that the Stone isn’t by his feet. Fred’s relieved, but George’s face goes through twenty million emotions as first he scours the entire area with his wand, then drops to his hands and knees to look, muttering, “Shit, no, no, where is it…?”

Fred thanks whatever higher beings took away the Stone as finally, after hours pass, George is forced to give up his search and leave after Hagrid comes after him and tells him that it’s getting late. Forcing a smile, George says, “Thanks,” and almost runs out of the castle grounds; stumbling on his half-turn, George Disapparates, reappearing in the empty shop, shoulders slumping.

Fred feels almost guilty, seeing how defeated his twin looks as he goes upstairs and collapses in bed. But he tells himself that this is better in the long run, that eventually George will learn to move on.

But he doesn’t. George does what he talked about and buys a “ouija board”, a Muggle device apparently used to talk to ghosts, then tinkers with it in his spare time between running the shop; Verity, their assistant, and Lee, who’d taken a temporary position at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes while he looked for a job, notice nothing off—Fred wants to scream. 

(He does scream, actually, because he’s a spirit—not a ghost, he hasn’t exactly _returned_ all the way, he can go back to the afterlife whenever he wants—and no one can hear him other than the tiny child or two that’s intuitive and young enough to sense things the grown-ups can’t, and even then they only glance around for a second.) 

Because how can Verity and Lee not see that George is destroying himself? He’s pushing himself to overwork, he’s gotten to the point where he visits Knockturn Alley on the regular to search for books on necromancy. _Necromancy!_ Hadn’t they sworn that they’d never touch the truly evil stuff?

Fred can do nothing but watch as George wields the Dark enchantments, and he can feel George’s soul crumbling at the edges as he casts spell after spell on the board in hopes that something will work.

Or, no. That’s not quite accurate. They’re not stupid—George does a lot of research, is careful with the spells to make sure they combine correctly and produce the result he wants without blowing himself up in the process. He was always the one to make their products work, after all; Fred had many of the ideas, but George was the one to make them a reality through his patient dedication. Honestly, Fred has no clue what George is even trying to do with the board until a couple of weeks later, when he installs a little lens on it and casts a final spell and says, “Fred?”

Fred feels himself being sucked in, then he’s hovering above the ouija board while George looks on in victory.

“It worked!”

“What?” Fred twists, but he’s stuck. “George, you can’t do this—”

“Of course I can, I just did,” says George. He picks up the board, taking Fred’s torso along with it. “How about we—”

“But I can’t—”

“Shh,” says George, and he sounds like a stranger. “I figured it out, and now you can stay.”


End file.
